sleeps

The world never sleeps?

Just how do animals sleep in the wild? Some animals sleep standing up, others even sleep while swimming or flying! The short, lyrical text provides fascinating information, such as location, position, and duration of sleep of animals living in different habitats.

elephant sleeping in standing position

Sleeping with one eye open 

Imagine being able to sleep with one eye open--and half your brain awake. Recent research confirms that dolphins and whales do--a phenomenon known as unihemispheric sleep.

Length of an Elephant's Sleep

• Elephants are not good sleepers. Elephants feel that they must be on the alert for predators. This is true of elephants in the wild and elephants in the zoo. As a result, elephants sleep a maximum of four hours per day/night. This four hours is not in a row. Elephants sleep for about 30 minutes and then get up for something to eat and then lie back down. They repeat this cycle until they get about four hours of sleep.

How Elephants Sleep

• Elephants sleep directly on the ground. They lie down on the ground and sleep on their sides. Since they get up a lot they often switch sides. They may lie on their left side for 30 minutes, get up and eat, and then lie back down on their right side for another 30 minutes. The reason is that elephants are big animals. Their bodies are quite heavy so when they lie down to get some rest they put all their weight on their bones. This is not comfortable for the elephant.

Do Elephants Sleep Together

• Elephants don't sleep together and in fact, they don't even sleep at the same time. This goes back to their watchfulness for predators. In a herd of elephants you will find some elephants awake at night while some are just going to sleep and others are just waking up. Since the elephants don't sleep long anyway you will never find a time when all of the elephants are asleep. If an elephant is asleep and there is a noise in another cage (at the zoo) the elephant will quickly jump up and stay awake. So elephants are very light sleepers.